The Art Assignment

Given that we talked about ekphrasis last week, I wanted to suggest this youtube channel, “The Art Assignment,” to everyone on this blog. “The Art Assignment” is a youtube channel founded by PBS and hosted by contemporary art curator of the Indianapolis museum (2007-2013), Sarah Green, that interviews contemporary artists about their work. Green will then provide some background art history on a topic related to the one the artist is talking about. The neatest thing about this channel, though, is that the artists create an assignment (does the channel name make sense now?) for the viewers. There’s an interactive community around this channel as well, because viewers will take on these assignments, submit them to the art assignment social media accounts, and then the channel makes compilation videos from some of the submissions.

The channel also does interesting work in challenging it’s viewers’ perception of art. The first video uploaded to the channel was about an art project where two people would measure the distance between them and find the exact middle point. Then they would both travel (and document their traveling) to that point. There are also videos about art that we could “conventional.” It’s a nice mix.

I also feel like this could be a good resource for us poets, because it can get us thinking about art in a dynamic (rather than static) sort of way. It also allows us prompts that we could use to do the art assignments or for our writing. I’d highly recommend checking out the channel, and, specifically, the video “Episode 9: Off,” which is a personal favorite of mine.